dan x wts excerpt

DANIELWATCH THE SKIESJAMES PATTERSON AND NED RUST

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANYNew York Boston

DanielX_TPtextF1.indd iiiDanielX_TPtextF1.indd iii 3/26/10 11:37:10 PM3/26/10 11:37:10 PM

Copyright © 2009 by James Patterson

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or trans-mitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval sys-tem, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017Visit our website at www.lb-kids.com

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

First Paperback Edition: June 2010First published in hardcover in July 2009 by Little, Brown and Company

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fi ctitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication DataPatterson, James. Daniel X : watch the skies / James Patterson & Ned Rust. — 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978- 0- 316- 03618-4 (hc) / 978- 0- 316-11969-6 (pb) I. Rust, Ned. II. Title. PS3566.A822D36 2009 813'.54 — dc22 2008043795

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

RRD- C

Printed in the United States of America

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PROLOGUENIGHT’S WHAT HAPPENS

WHEN YOUR SIDE OF THE

PLANET IS POINTED AT

OUTER SPACE

DanielX_TPtextF1.indd 1DanielX_TPtextF1.indd 1 3/26/10 8:45:38 PM3/26/10 8:45:38 PM

3

One

IT WAS A pretty regular early- summer night at 72 Little

Lane. The crickets and katydids were making that sooth-

ing racket they do on warm, still, small- town evenings.

The back porch light was on, but otherwise the tidy brown

house was happily, sleepily dark.

At least it was until about eleven thirty, when the dark

night in Holliswood became a whole lot darker.

It’s hard to exactly translate the command that trig-

gered it — it couldn’t be heard by human ears, and the

language of insects isn’t one that can easily be put into

words anyhow — but every six- legged creature in the area

instantly hid under rocks, wedged into tree bark, or dug

down into the dirt . . . and became very, very quiet.

And then, inside the small brown house, it became

very, very loud.


James Patterson

4

Every speaker — on the computers, on the cell phones,

on the iPods, on the radios, on the telephones, on the

brand- new Sony fl at screen with THX surround sound and

every other TV set in the house, even on the “intelligent”

microwave — began to blast a dance song from a popular

old movie.

A song that just happened to be the favorite of a very

powerful alien.


5

Two

THE BOY FUMBLED for his clock radio. It was blaring

some superlame old seventies song by one of those awful

disco bands his mom sometimes played in the car. His sis-

ter must have changed the station and turned the volume

up full blast as a prank. He’d get her back — later, in the

morning, when he’d had some sleep.

He punched the snooze button, but it didn’t shut off.

He fl icked the switch on the side, but it didn’t shut off. He

picked up the clock from his bedside table and saw that it

was just past eleven thirty. She was going to pay for this.

He reached down and pulled the cord out of the

socket . . . but it still didn’t shut off.

“What the — ?!” he said, and rubbed his eyes with his

free hand.

The clock’s glowing display now read, “DANCE.”


James Patterson

6

And then the disco song started over, and a voice loud

and screechy enough to cut through all the noise said: “DO

THE DANCE!”

“Now that’s freaky,” said the boy, and just as he started

to get really scared, a blue spark leaped out of the alarm

clock and up his arm — and he bolted out of his room.

He knew what he had to do.

In the hallway he collided with his father but didn’t

say a word. And now his mom and sister were pushing at

him from behind, and the entire family tumbled down the

front stairs to the living room.

It was weird, thought the boy, because he was pretty

sure he hated dancing.

But now he couldn’t stop himself. He strode to the cen-

ter of the living room and somehow knew exactly what

moves to make, and — except for the look of terror in his

eyes — he boogied his heart out like a pimply, pajama-

wearing John Travolta.

His mom, dad, and sister didn’t look like they were hav-

ing too much fun, either.

In fact, the only fun in the house was being had by the

fi ve grotesque alien beings fi lming the family from behind

the eerie lights, high- tech microphones, and multilens

video cameras set up in the adjoining dining room.

They were laughing their slimy heads off. Not literally,

but if one of these horrifi c creatures had actually knocked

its own block off, picked it up from the fl oor, and eaten it,

the boy wouldn’t have been surprised.

“By Antares, they’re good,” one of the monsters said,


Daniel X: Watch the Skies

7

slapping one of its six scaly knees. “It’s just like Saturday

Night Fever!”

And then the fat one in charge — cradling the bullhorn

in his left tentacle, nearly crushing the cheap folding can-

vas chair with his weight — replied with a sigh.

“Yes, it’s almost a shame we have to terminate them.”


8

Three

THE FIVE ALIENS were still hungry even after their fresh

kill. They scuttled and hovered out of the news van they’d

swiped from the local TV station and pressed their ugly

wet noses against the windows of the Holliswood Diner. A

young waitress with wavy black hair was reading a paper-

back novel at the counter.

“Business is about to pick up a lot,” said the boss alien,

who had a thousand- pound intergalactic champion sumo

wrestler’s body and the head of a catfi sh. No ears, no neck,

no legs — and no manners.

He reached out to his personal assistant — a big-

nosed space ape — grabbed its cell phone, and punched

in a number. The three other henchbeasts twitched with

anticipation. This was looking to turn into a pretty excit-

ing Saturday night.



9

When the girl leaned across the counter to pick up the

diner’s phone, a little spark leaped out of the receiver, arc-

ing straight into her ear. Her eyes turned glassy as she put

down the phone and went to open the door for them.

“What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot- dog ven-

dor?” asked the lead alien as the waitress showed them to

their booths, already chuckling to himself at the coming

punch line.

“Make me one with everything” said the girl, robot-

ically.

The creatures burst into laughter.

“Actually, on second thought, sweetie,” he added, “why

don’t you go and make us everything with everything.

Chop- chop!”

“Good one, boss!” said his assistant, stealthily snatch-

ing his cell phone back from where his employer had rested

it on the table. He carefully wiped it down with a napkin

before putting it back in his purple fanny pack.

The waitress, in the meantime, had fl own into motion

as if somebody had hit the ×2 button on her remote control.

She prepared and delivered to the aliens heaping stacks

of eggs, bacon, sausage, waffl es, coffee, Cokes, bagels, bur-

gers, turkey platters, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, onion

rings, cheesesteaks, cheesecakes, clam chowder, gravy

fries, banana cream pies, root- beer fl oats, and chicken-

fried steaks. And several mugs of fryer oil.

“Careful or you’ll burn her out, boss,” advised one of

the henchbeasts.

“Like I care,” said the boss. “We got about six billion of


James Patterson

10

them to get rid of. And, come to think of it,” he said with

a laugh that sounded like somebody blowing bubbles in

turkey gravy, “there are plenty more where you came from

too.”

And, with that, he grabbed the henchbeast and pum-

meled it against the linoleum fl oor. The sound that fi lled

the diner was like a roach getting crushed by a hard- soled

shoe — only much louder.


11

Four

“THERE’S YOUR DESSERT.” The lead alien, who hap-

pened to be number fi ve on The List of Alien Outlaws on

Terra Firma, gestured at the henchbeast’s remains.

The other aliens shared an uncomfortable silence as

they slowly converged on the carcass. Number 5 rolled

his gooey eyes and continued shoveling fried food into his

extrawide mouth.

“Looks like we got company,” said the personal assis-

tant, nodding at the fl ashing red and blue lights in the

parking lot. A moment later the front door to the diner

fl ew open, and a sheriff and deputy burst in with their

guns drawn.

“Hands u—” the sheriff started to shout, but Number 5

fi red a wide- angle ray gun that instantly turned both offi -

cers into puddles of something resembling swamp mud.


James Patterson

12

“Clean that up. I’m eating here,” said Number 5.

The two henchbeasts eagerly turned away from the

carcass of their fallen comrade and with long, rubbery

tongues devoured the human sludge.

“Speaking of annoying law- enforcement types,” said

Number 5, smacking his lips and sipping a scalding mug

of fryer oil, “my spider senses tell me somebody even more

pesky is on his way here.”

“Not him?” asked his assistant.

“The same,” said Number 5.

A collective, defensive growl rose up from the alien

crew.

“That pipsqueak is almost enough to turn me off my

Caesar salad,” the personal assistant complained, down-

ing an entire bowl of lettuce.

“Let’s just remember what’s most important here,”

Number 5 said. “First, keep to the schedule. This is our

biggest production yet, and we can’t miss a beat.

“And second — ugly as he is — little Danny could very

well be our lead man. So let’s not kill him . . . right away.”


part oneACTUALLY, ALIENS SHOULD FEAR THE REAPER


15

Chapter 1

YOU KNOW THE second- coolest of all my superpowers?

It’s the one that lets me hear any song I’ve ever heard as

loud as I want, as often as I want, and anytime I want. It’s

like I have an iPod implanted in my head. Only it holds,

like, terabytes more songs, and the sound quality’s better.

And it never needs to be docked or recharged.

The song I was playing over and over again right then,

as I motorcycled down I-80, was “Don’t Fear the Reaper”

by Blue Oyster Cult. I know it kinda puts the K in Klas-

sic Rock, but it’s a good one. And it was going along real

well with my thoughts and plans — wherein I am the Grim

Reaper . . . of very, very bad aliens.

I leave the good ones alone, of course. But,

honestly — not to bum you out — I’ve only bumped into a

couple other “good” aliens here on your Big Blue Marble.


James Patterson

16

So what’s the coolest of my superpowers, you ask? The

way I can smell alien sweat from ten miles away even while

speeding along a highway with my helmet on? The way

I’ve recently learned to make high- performance, hybrid-

engine racing bikes that can travel three thousand miles at

seventy- fi ve miles per hour on a tank of gas? The way I can

pop a wheelie . . . on my front tire?

Well, that’s almost unstoppable, but, no, the coolest

of my superpowers is the one with which I can create my

best friends — Willy, Joe, Emma, and Dana — out of my

imagination.

It takes some concentration, and I have to be rested and

not taking any allergy medicine, but, really, being able to

shoot fi reballs or outrace locomotives is nothing next to

being able to make friends out of thin air.

And they’re not bottom- of- the- barrel specimens, either.

Joe is great with video games and computers, and other-

wise is basically a life- support device for the world’s

fastest- moving mouth. He’s either chewing his way

through some mountain of food that weighs twice as much

as his skinny butt, or he’s talking a blue — and totally

hilarious — streak.

Emma is our moral compass. The part that gets her

worked up about Alien Outlaws is that they’re on Terra

Firma and doing harm not just to people but to Nature.

Mother Earth has no better advocate than her Birkenstock-

wearing self.

Emma’s older brother is Willy. He’s the ultimate wing

man, built like a brick and slightly harder to scare than one



17

too. He’s our go- to guy when it comes to weapons and engines

and stuff like that. Plus, he’s more loyal than, like, Batman’s

butler Alfred, Sam in The Lord of the Rings, Wesley in The

Princess Bride, and King Arthur’s horse combined.

Finally, Dana is, well . . . she manages to be both the

most beautiful and the most grounded person I’ve ever

encountered. In the universe. Remember, I haven’t exactly

been operating out of a Montana shack all these years.

Oh, and all four of them happen to be outstanding at

don’ t- try- this- at-home motorcycle stunts. Which we were

thoroughly enjoying on this particular night, chasing after

an eighteen- wheeler. Keep in mind that aliens don’t neces-

sarily abide by the same rules humans do when it comes to

minimum driving age.

“Slalom!” Willy, who was in the lead, called out. One of

our favorite tricks.

We leaned the bikes almost on their sides and — get

this — zipped under the trailer . . . behind wheels seven,

eight, nine, and ten, and in front of wheels eleven through

eighteen . . . and came out safely on the other side.

Finally we pulled up to a small- town diner.

“Sorry about this,” I said to my friends, climbing off my

bike. I was about to face off with the most powerful alien

I’d ever engaged in mortal combat.

“Sorry for what?” asked Joe.

“Number 5,” I told them, furrowing my brow. “You

smell that?”

There was a terrible smell in the air, like somebody had

left a herring- salad sandwich in a hot car . . . for a week.


James Patterson

18

“Ugh!” Emma wrinkled her nose. “I’m catching it too.

Seriously bad news.”

“Yeah, Daniel,” Willy echoed. “This guy must be more

evil than the stink in your sneakers. We better get ready to

rumble.”

“My sneakers don’t smell, Willy,” I said. “And I can’t put

you guys at risk. This is between me . . . and Number 5.”

“You’re such a boy,” said Dana, hand on her hip, a look

of concerned disapproval on her face. “Are you sure you’re

ready to go that high up The List? No offense, Daniel, but

you got pretty lucky with Number 6.”

“Always with the pep talks, Dana. Thanks a lot.”

Then I clapped my hands, and she and the rest of them

fl ickered out of existence. (I actually don’t need to clap,

but it looks cool.)

And then I cleared my head for battle.


19

Chapter 2

HIS STENCH WAS bad outside, but that was nothing com-

pared to how it was in the diner. This guy made low tide

smell like aftershave.

I must have missed him by just a matter of minutes —

the scraps of moist membrane rotting in the booth where

he’d been sitting hadn’t even skinned over — but he and

his henchbeasts had gotten away while the getting was

still good.

Unfortunately, with these higher- up- The- List baddies, I

was discovering a trend: they often seemed to know I was

coming. I guess I should be fl attered that they didn’t want

to run into me, but it was more than a little frustrating

to keep bringing my A- game only to fi nd nobody to play

with.


James Patterson

20

Well, almost nobody. They’d left behind a waitress.

She was in no shape to play, though. The poor girl was

collapsed like a rag doll on the fl oor next to the counter.

Her burnt- out face reminded me of a kid’s toy you might

have tried to run on a car battery rather than AAAs.

The name stitched on the pocket of her calico uniform

was Judy Blue Eyes.

“Hey, Judy. You okay?”

“Nnnn,” she said, consciousness slowly percolating

back. Her eyes — worthy of the name on her uniform, I

could see now — started to fl utter.

I helped her into a booth and gave her a glass of water.

“ Wh- wh’appen?” she stuttered.

“Food fi ght,” I said, only it was far worse than that.

Smashed china plates, syrup and salt caked on the walls,

soda dripping from the tabletops, empty jelly packets stuck

to the seats, ketchup and mayo on the jukeboxes, Promise

spread splattered on the ceiling, slicks of alien slime

pooled everywhere like a sticky mix of spilled honey and

coffee.

“Oh gosh,” she said, struggling to sit up and take it all

in. “I’m so- o fi red.”

“Nah,” I said. “I can give you a hand.” And then, like

somebody had pressed the ×8 button on my remote, I

zipped around with a broom, a mop, a couple bottles of

Windex, and a dozen dishrags and had the place spick-

and-span in no time, literally.

“Man, I’m really out of it,” said Judy as I returned to her



21

now- gleaming booth. “I mean, did you just clean all that

up in, like, ten seconds?”

Man, was she cute. I was trying to think of something

clever to say back, but I had this weird tightness in my

chest, and all I could manage was this really lame giggle.

Must be an alien thing.


22

Chapter 3

I DON’T KNOW what got into me because it’s totally

against policy to give the straight scoop to civilians, but

Judy insisted on making me a grilled cheese sandwich and

a bowl of chili — the aliens hadn’t quite eaten every scrap

of food in the place — and before I knew it I’d told her just

about the whole story.

How I was an Alien Hunter and my parents, Graff and

Atrelda (bless their weird- named souls), had been Alien

Hunters and how their mission was to protect nice folks

from the thousands of aliens who wanted to take advan-

tage of, plunder, pillage, and sometimes plain- out destroy

places like this.

“Places like this?” Judy smiled wryly, not taking me

seriously. “You can hardly blame them for wanting to



23

plain- out destroy Holliswood. I mean, this place is nothing

but a prefab smear of parking lots, giant superstores, drive-

through banks, twenty- garage automotive franchises, and

chain restaurants. And mean girls, dumb jocks, and people

who get their news from those scrolly things running

across the bottom of their favorite stupid TV show — while

running on the treadmill at the gym.”

I couldn’t help but admire her astute observational

skills. Not to mention her honesty and directness. She

didn’t seem to think I was nuts yet, so I kept rambling.

I told her how one of the alien baddies, the worst of

the worst, had killed my parents when I was just three,

and how I’d barely escaped with my life and — almost as

important — The List.

Judy stopped smiling. “Don’t joke about your parents

being murdered,” she said.

“I wouldn’t joke about that,” I told her. And nothing

could be more true.

Her eyes were still penetrating mine. “And . . . The List

is . . . ?”

She was still with me, so I spilled all the rest. How

The List was, in full, called The List of Alien Outlaws on

Terra Firma, and how it was an interactive, constantly self-

updating summary of all the ill- intended Outer Ones now

residing on the planet, ranked from number one to some-

where in the hundreds of thousands, from most dangerous

to those that are barely stronger than a human.

And how my parents’ evil murderer — known as The


James Patterson

24

Prayer — was number one on that list . . . and that it was my

life’s goal to hunt him down and kill him.

Sorry, I get a little hung up on that sometimes.

When I fi nished, Judy was looking at me like I was

C- R- A- Z-Y, so I slapped on my best damage- control smile

and said, “Psych! Just messing with you! I love making up

stories.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, looking more than a little con-

fused — and creeped out.

Sometimes I’m more extrastupid than extraterrestrial.

“Okay, gotta go!” I said, fl ashing damage- control smile

variation number two.

“Sure . . .” Judy said. “Come back and see us real soon,

um — what did you say your name was again?”

“Daniel,” I said, and fl ew out the door before she asked

me my last name.

That part of getting to know someone is always a little

awkward . . . when you don’t have a last name.


25

Chapter 4

YOU KNOW HOW dogs go wild over mailmen? Well, you

haven’t seen a dog go postal till you’ve seen one detect the

scent of the bad sort of alien. It’s hilarious.

Right now, I was the one about to go postal because

I couldn’t detect anything at all. My alien- tracking nose

could rival a bloodhound’s, but unfortunately, I wasn’t get-

ting any directional indications on Number 5. I sensed he

was still in town someplace, but he must have started tak-

ing some new kind of precautions against me.

I was upset, but not so much that I couldn’t recognize

it was a beautiful night, and since I needed some rest any-

how, I decided to make camp. I took a minute or two to

gaze at the twinkling stars and run through the names of

all that were visible. Even on the clearest of Earth nights,

you can only see about two thousand stars from the planet’s


James Patterson

26

surface . . . but get me up past the murky atmosphere, and

I’ll name you a couple million that would be distinguish-

able even to your human eyes.

Then I turned on my laptop. Not just any laptop,

this one — it’s one some creatures would, literally, kill

for . . . because it alone contains the complete and perpetu-

ally updated List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma.

I can shape The List as anything from an interactive

scroll to a heads- up display visor, but I usually access it as

a laptop, since I like to practice not standing out. Plus, that

way — when I’m not researching — I can download mov-

ies from Netfl ix.

So I logged in and did a little research on the stinking

outlaw I’d just missed at the diner. Number 5 hailed from a

remote swamp planet with an unpronounceable name that

makes the Siberian tundra seem cosmopolitan.

But since leaving his provincial home and fi nding his

way to the bright lights and big megalopolises of the cen-

tral star clusters, he’d been working his way through the

ranks, and now he was an up- and-coming entertainment

mogul. Kind of an alien version of Aaron Spelling, if Aaron

Spelling were a few degrees more bloodthirsty than Attila

the Hun.

His MO was to fi nd technologically evolving but still

largely defenseless cultures — such as Earth’ s — where he

could easily move in, steal some of their better entertain-

ment ideas, enslave their unwary populations, and then

walk away with a treasure trove of exploitive, derivative



27

programs that he’d then proceed to syndicate to networks

across the cosmos.

So what made this swamp creature worthy of the num-

ber fi ve spot on The List? His signature cinematic fl ourish:

to kill his cast as the last act of their skits. In fact, because

they always died at the end, he was considered the founder

of a new style of alien program that they called — in typi-

cally lame alien fashion — endertainment.

Nobody’s ever accused the Outer Ones of having over-

developed senses of humor, that’s for sure.


28

Chapter 5

NOT SURPRISINGLY, AFTER refreshing my knowledge

about Number 5, I had some trouble sleeping. Kidnap,

brainwashing, wanton murder, callous exploitation of

sentient creatures on at least three dozen underdeveloped

worlds . . .

I was going to enjoy removing him from Earth,

permanently.

As soon as the sun was up, I headed back to town.

Guided by a sort of eighth sense — I have seven legiti-

mate senses, at least that I’ve so far discovered — that told

me there was something funky going on in the immedi-

ate vicinity, I pulled into the S- Mart twenty- four-hour

superstore and found a parking space next to a minivan

that was being loaded by a pregnant woman. She was

lifting a fl at of motor oil . . . and sweating like crazy.



29

“Need a hand with that, ma’am?” I offered. She gave me

a blank stare and made a weird bubbling sound with her

mouth.

“Okay, sorry to bother you,” I said, noticing one of her

grocery bags seemed to have at least twenty cans of fi sh

food in it. That struck me as a little weird, but maybe she

ran a pet store or something.

I turned to go into the store, but as I stepped out from

behind the minivan, I almost got decked by a green plas-

tic S- Mart grocery cart — pushed by another pregnant

woman.

I did a double take — to make sure I hadn’t accidentally

wandered toward a Mommies “R” Us or something — and

nearly got fl attened by another pregnant woman, who was

seemingly in a race with three other pregnant women, all

making a beeline for the store’s entrance.

“Weird,” I said, and headed inside, where things got

weirder still.


30

Chapter 6

I WALKED INTO the store and heard this strange, gur-

gling voice on the piped- in infotainment shopper channel,

and I’m like, huh, that sure is a strange person to pick as

your announcer. I was relieved to be approached by a very

normal- looking, young fresh- faced store clerk as I walked in.

“Can I help you fi nd something, sir?” He looked like a

good candidate for Employee of the Month.

“Yeah . . .” I said, operating on my eighth sense again,

“fi sh food.”

As the clerk led me through hardware and housewares

and electronics, I found myself gagging. And when I spot-

ted a video display, I understood why.

Scowling on- screen was none other than the unfortu-

nate fi sh head of Number 5.

And even more unfortunate, he saw me.



31

Number 5 scowled, and his image disappeared, leav-

ing a prerecorded Rosie O’Donnell to talk about some

titanium- plated sandwich maker. Maybe he’d spotted me

from one of the overhead security cameras. Did that mean

he was in the store someplace?

“Sir? Are you all right?” the clerk called back to me.

“Couldn’t be better,” I told him with a weak smile. “Are

we there yet?”

“Almost,” he replied, as we passed an empty motor- oil

section . . . and then his voice transformed into a hideously

twisted gurgle, just like the infotainment announcer’s

voice: “We’re going to Number 5.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Until I realized that smiley Mr. Employee- of- the- Month

was heading toward a sign for aisle fi ve — Pet Food. And he

was soon surrounded by an enormous throng of pregnant

women who stood slack mouthed, staring at some empty

shelves where all the fi sh food had been.

I was just about to tell everyone to take their fi sh- food

orders to a certain minivan in the parking lot, when World

War III broke out in aisle four.


32

Chapter 7

GUIDED BY THE sound of explosions, falling shelves, and

screams, I made a mad dash to the source of the chaos,

leaping over people, dodging carts, somersaulting over

cardboard display stands.

The cause of the commotion was a makeshift fi lm set

“manned” by ten henchbeasts that were melting terrorized

shoppers with their weapons. And heading the group was

an alien that made my jaw hit the fl oor — a big- nosed ape

that was none other than number twenty- one on The List.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have taken even a

nanosecond to think about it. Because as soon as he saw

me — and clearly he’d been waiting in ambush — he fi red

this rifl e kind of thing with a round dish on its front end.

At me.

I’ve got some pretty good refl exes, if I do say so myself,



33

and I managed to leap up into the air before he got the

shot off — like high enough so that I could grab one of the

exposed I beams in the thirty- foot ceiling — but I wasn’t

fast enough.

A massive shockwave slammed into me, compressing

all the air in the warehouse- sized store and smacking me

down like I was a fl y and it was a rolled- up newspaper. I

crunched onto the fl oor, my ears ringing, my vision blurry,

the room spinning.

“This is gold,” Number 21 cackled.

It would’ve been a great time to conjure up my friends

or some weapons to help me kick some alien butt, but right

now I could barely remember the word for ouch. I was on

my own.

“We’ve found a lot of talented extras here in S- Mart,”

Number 21 said darkly. “But you’re our best talent of the

day, Daniel.”

My legs were like rubber as I staggered to my feet and

forced myself into a jujitsu stance, instinctively realiz-

ing that since I couldn’t think clearly enough to create a

peashooter, I was going to have to resort to old- fashioned

hand- to-hand combat.

Unfortunately, I was still so unsteady, I think I ended

up looking more like a clumsy clown than a highly trained

martial artist.

Number 21 was busting a gut. He mopped his sweaty

brow and slung his shockwave cannon over his shoulder.

“Are you guys getting this?” he asked the henchbeasts that

were fi lming the shopping nightmare.


James Patterson

34

One of the crew asked, “Should we melt him too?”

“Nah,” Number 21 replied. “This was just his screen

test. Boss says he’s still got some real important parts to

play.”

And then everything went black as I fell back against a

tower of mac- and-cheese boxes.


35

Chapter 8

AS I CAME to, I could feel the henchbeasts’ high- tech

restraint device squeezing me from my chest down, hold-

ing me to the fl oor.

“Can we make a deal?” I pleaded to the two shadowy

fi gures standing over me — and then, um, I became about

as embarrassed as I’ve ever been in Earth years.

What was holding me to the fl oor was not some alien-

tech, carbon- fi ber straitjacket, but a whole mountain of

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes that I’d knocked on top

of myself when I passed out.

And the two fi gures standing above me weren’t alien

henchbeasts, but two skate kids.

“You mean you want us to join your crew?!” asked the

shorter chubby one.

“Dude, that’s so stoner!” said the taller skinny one.


James Patterson

36

“Yeah, when you jumped up and the monkey dude with

the big space- gun blasted you and you fell! Whomp, dude!

Stomped like a narc! And those guys in the weird bug suits

with the cameras? Totally awesome FX.”

“You,” I said, looking down the aisle at the brown stains

on the fl oor that had been some of their fellow humans not

long ago, “are insane.”

“And you, dude, are a magnate! When’s the show going

to be on? Are you guys on YouTube?”

“You guys used to watch Punk’d, didn’t you?”

“Dude. Ashton rules,” he said, lifting up his buddy’s

sweatshirt to show an “I ♥ Punk’d” decal.

I like humans; I truly do. But sometimes it amazes me

their civilization ever got off the ground.


37

Chapter 9

MY FRIED HEAD and body were starting to feel better

as I crossed the parking lot back to my motorcycle. At the

moment I was too bummed about losing my fi rst battle

against Number 5’s crew to continue my investigation

alone.

So I decided to summon Mom and Dad. I was so aching

for my family right then, I even whipped up Brenda, aka

Pork Chop — my annoying little sister — out of thin air.

“Um, Daniel, I don’t think we’re all going to fi t,” said

Pork Chop, nodding at my bike.

“You are not still riding motorcycles,” said Mom. “You

know how I feel about them, Daniel. Not safe.”

Dad smiled knowingly at me. It wasn’t an argument

worth having with Mom, although — for the record — he

and I knew that unless I had an accident on my bike that


James Patterson

38

involved falling into the sun or possibly a direct hit from

an Opus 24/24, chances were I would escape permanent

injury. And so — presto change- o — I willed some addi-

tional matter into existence and transformed my motor-

cycle into an awesome late- eighties vintage, wood- panel,

retrofi tted Dodge minivan.

“Air bags?” asked Mom.

“ Side- impact air bags and ABS,” I assured her and gave

her the keys.

“Well, let’s get going,” said Dad. “Time’s a wasting, and

we need to convene a strategy session for dealing with

Number 5 and Number 21.”

The man never took a breath without having a six- point

plan for it.

“And then, dear, sweet, wonderful, multitalented

brother, we can all go out in the yard and polish the giant

golden statue we’ve made of you because we love and adore

you and, basically, worship your fantastic self . . . or not,”

said my sister, making the L- is- for- Loser sign against her

forehead.

I was too tired to retaliate, so I just rolled my eyes.

“So where’s home, anyway?” I asked.

“Why, right here,” said Mom, pulling the minivan over

in front of a huge Victorian house with a wraparound

porch and a FOR RENT sign in the front yard.

Even without a golden statue of me in the backyard,

the house was beautiful. The landlord, however, was not

so easy on the eyes. We’d called the number on the sign

saying we were interested in the property, and he showed



39

up about fi fteen minutes later in a gleaming, new, top-

of- the- line Ferrari. Right off the bat, he was grouchy and

impatient with us.

“Can we have a look around?” Dad asked.

“Let’s not beat around the bush here.” He’d spotted our

dilapidated minivan and peered at us through his amber

sunglasses. His shifty eyes darted around, sizing us up

like we were so many head of cattle and he was a rancher.

Or a butcher.


40

Chapter 10

SO, AS YOU can see, I have trust issues.

But it wouldn’t have taken a ninth sense — let alone a

sixth sense — to know the guy defi nitely wasn’t cool. The

next thing you know, his eyes fi xed on Mom’s modest

engagement ring.

“Three thousand,” he said, and spat some tobacco juice

into the lawn.

“Dollars? A month?!” my mom asked.

“Plus a month’s rent in advance. Security deposit. And

heat and electricity are not included,” he said, already turn-

ing back toward his luxury sports car.

“We’ll take it,” said Dad.

The man spun around. “Now, don’t waste my time here,

buddy. I have twenty properties to manage and can’t waste

time on deadbeats.”



41

“Are you calling us deadbeats?” asked Mom.

Pork Chop blew a bubble and stared at him men-

acingly.

“All right then — a cashier’s check. Six thousand dol-

lars made payable to Ernesto Gout. And I need it today. I

have a lot of other people looking at this place.”

The guy tensed up a little as Dad stepped toward him,

but Dad was all smiles.

“It’s a deal, sir,” he said, putting out his hand.

The landlord grudgingly accepted the handshake,

whereupon I quickly stepped up behind him and put my

hand on the back of his head, causing him to go rigid like

somebody had dropped an ice cube down his shirt.

Cool Alien Hunter power number 141: Telepathic Atti-

tude Adjustments.

“So, would cash be okay?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, of course. Cash would be fi ne,” he said,

quickly coming around.

“And how about if you bring it to us by, oh, say, noon.”

For a moment it looked like he was going to lose his

lunch, but he nodded.

“And we’ll need you to call the electric and gas compa-

nies and arrange to pay that yourself, okay?”

“ Yeah- yeah, sure- sure.”

“And, here, why don’t we trade cars? You take the mini-

van, so you can have some more room for stuff when you

run our errands. And we’ll keep the Ferrari.”

“Great idea.”

“All right then. If you can just give me the keys to the


James Patterson

42

house and your car, I’ll let you go to the bank and get us

our money.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

It all goes to show that you can’t always believe fi rst

impressions.

Or, if you don’t like your fi rst impression, then change

it. I mean, if you’re an Alien Hunter.


43

Chapter 11

AFTER MR. GOUT returned with the money, we sent him

off to get some lumber and other things to help alienproof

the house. His attitude was much improved — he actually

seemed happy about it.

“Your abilities are getting sharper,” remarked Dad, “but

you’re going to need a bit more than that for Number 5.

In fact, I’ve managed to update his profi le, and I created a

brief dossier I want you to digest before dinner.”

“And you aren’t going out till you’ve taken a shower and

done your laundry,” added Mom. “You look like a raga-

muffi n. And tomorrow you’re getting a haircut.”

I guess it’s a little weird that I let myself get bossed

around by people that are essentially products of my

imagination; but what kind of parents would they be

otherwise?


James Patterson

44

“Sure, Mom,” I humored her. Meantime, I went to

check out some updates and relevant List computer infor-

mation that Dad had helped me locate on Number 5 and

Number 21.

You don’t make it into The List’s top ten without a pretty

terrifying résumé to back it up, but the more I found out

about Number 5, the more it was clear this was going to be

my biggest test yet.

Like the electric eels on Earth, his species had evolved

in murky swamp waters where electrical powers gave a

creature a distinct advantage. Only, of course, his species

had evolved a little more than any eel. Not only were Num-

ber 5 and his kin able to sense and stun with electricity,

but they could also manipulate the electrical impulses in

their prey’s brains and actually hypnotize them into doing

whatever they wanted.

According to recent reports, it wasn’t uncommon to

fi nd Number 5’s species living with a handful of attending

servants, who would do everything from cleaning to cook-

ing themselves for dinner.

In the fi eld of electromagnetics, Number 5 was

described as something of an artist — you know, like

in the way Genghis Khan was an artist with battlefi eld

tactics and ruthless leadership. Oh, sorry . . . maybe you

missed that part of world history class.

Also, he was a dynamo of energy. Literally. Where an

electric eel could generate a few kilowatts — enough to kill

the population of, say, a bathtub — Number 5 could gener-



45

ate enough electricity to fry an entire water park full of

people . . . and even those out in the parking lot.

As to Number 21, the space ape that had gotten the

jump on me in S- Mart, I discovered his show- biz name

was Dougie Starshine and that he’d been credited as the

production assistant and casting director on Number 5’s

last dozen shows — and that he was no weakling, either.

That alien miscreant was wanted for murder in a half

dozen galaxies, and it looked like he had some pretty seri-

ous psychic warfare talents. I mean, maybe a twenty- one

ranking doesn’t quite compare to a top- ten baddie, but

if you’re the type of reader who likes a little perspective,

consider that Joe and I had fi gured out that if Superman

were evil and real (in fact, he is loosely based on a real

alien from the Crab Nebula), he’d come in at about number

thirty- seven.

Real aliens seldom have weaknesses as obvious as

kryptonite.


46

Chapter 12

DAD AND I went out back and did some jujitsu train-

ing — and savate, tae kwon do, taekkyon, aikido, judo, and

glima for good measure — and held a brief tactical plan-

ning session afterward.

He’d decided that when you boiled it right down, all

that Number 21 had done to me was seize the advantage

by using the element of surprise.

If there is a kryptonite for me, then there you have it:

because my powers are directly linked to my imagination,

I have to be thinking clearly in order to make the best use

of them.

By hitting me with that concussion- inducing shock-

wave, Number 21 had been able to keep me disoriented

and unable, for instance, to visualize any weapons — or

summon my alien- butt-kicking friends.



47

“Hey, Mom,” I yelled. She was sitting on the back porch

reading a book, The Elephant- Keeper’s Secret Kite, that I’d

picked up for her. Have I mentioned that I love elephants

and that it’s a little- known fact that they originated on my

home planet?

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she replied. “All we have here is a tin

of caviar I found in the mailbox along with a lot of other

old junk mail.”

“Caviar?” I asked. “As in fi sh eggs?”

“A lot of people consider it a delicacy, Daniel,” she

reminded me, holding out the package. It was still in its

clear plastic mailer, addressed to “Female Resident.”

I tore open the bag and read the note that came with

the can:

A gift to the women of Holliswood from the KHAW

news team, in gratitude for your kindness to visiting

fi lm producers. Bon appétit!

Caviar from the local news station? Well go ahead

and chalk up mystery number 112 for me to solve

already. And, while you’re at the board, why don’t you

put me down for what is really only my second bad pun

ever — although in this case I think you’ll agree it’s com-

pletely unavoidable — because there was something very

fi shy going on in this town.


48

Chapter 13

SINCE I REALLY did not want caviar for dinner — or

ever — I sent Mr. Gout out for some KFC original recipe. I

knew my friends, especially Joe, would never forgive me if

I didn’t summon them for the Colonel Sanders gorge fest.

Joe nearly cried with happiness when he saw Mr. Gout

come in the door with the big red- and-white buckets.

Then Dana, Willy, Joe, and Emma and I said good

night to my parents and hopped into the Ferrari. The

only problem was the fi ve of us couldn’t fi t in a two- seater

sports car.

“Leave Dana here,” said Joe.

“No way,” said Dana, “You’re the one who smells like

Colonel Sanders’s gym shorts.”

“I’ll stay behind if you guys want,” said the ever-



49

sacrifi cing Emma. “Even though all I smell like is coleslaw

because nobody ever asks what I want to eat for dinner.”

Emma always serves us a generous helping of grief for

eating meat.

“Hey, you kids,” said Dad, who was standing on the

front lawn, laughing at us along with Pork Chop. “Take

the minivan,” he suggested. “I made some modifi cations

that will help quite a bit with your, um, errands tonight.”

Willy had already clambered out of the overstuffed Fer-

rari and was sliding open the minivan’s side- panel door.

“Dudes. You gotta come check this out!”


50

Chapter 14

DAD HAD CONVERTED the minivan into a cross between

Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine and a NASA command

center.

The spacious, now shag- carpeted interior was blinking,

pulsing, and humming with sensor displays, joysticks,

trackballs, touchpads, data visors, relay panels, heads- up

displays, sampling hoods, and holographic imagers.

“This is great, Dad,” I said. “So how’s everything

work?”

“I’m sure a genius like you can fi gure it out in no time,”

said Pork Chop, snapping her bubblegum.

“It’s all very user- friendly,” said Dad. “I don’t think any

of you will have any trouble getting the hang of it.”

“Actually, it’s my four copilots who’ll be getting the

hang of it,” I said. “I’m driving.”



51

They groaned but settled into the back of the van with-

out another note of complaint as I drove toward the out-

skirts of town. They’re good friends like that.

As we made our way down the quaint residential

streets, you couldn’t help noticing the windows of nearly

every house glowing with the eerie blue fl icker of TV

and computer screens. This thing called Contemporary

America — and its obsession with televisions, game sys-

tems, and computers — has gone a little far if you ask me.

Some call it the Information Age, but I’d tend to say it’s

more the Sitting- on-one’ s- butt- and- letting- other- people-

do- the- thinking- for-you Age.

“You guys fi nd anything useful back there?” I asked,

turning onto Mulberry from Larch.

“Yes, I think I have our fi rst target!” said Joe. “There’s a

whole mess of ’em in a building about a half mile from us.

Hang a left here and then a right at the next stoplight.”

“How many are there?” asked Willy, practicing some

jujitsu moves in the middle of the van.

“Can’t tell yet. Hang on, okay?” Joe remained intent on

his data feed. I turned at the light onto a commercial street

lined with stores and shopping plazas.

“Okay, it’s up there on the right,” said Joe. “Should

say ‘White Castle’ on it . . . and it’s absolutely infested

with . . . hamburgers!”

We pelted him with food wrappers, empty soda cans, a

couple of dirty sneakers. I should’ve remembered that no

mission is more important to Joe than fi lling his supersize-

me stomach.


52

Chapter 15

JOE PRACTICALLY HAD to be held down to be kept from

leaping out of the van as we passed the White Castle.

I steered back to our original route, but we didn’t get

very far. A man, covered from head to toe in mud, stag-

gered out of the bushes and into the middle of the road.

I swerved and hit the brakes.

“Hey,” I yelled out the window. “You need some help?”

He ignored me and staggered up the lawn of a house

whose windows — like all the others we’d seen — were

fl ickering blue from TV and computer displays.

“Yo,” yelled Willy, climbing out of the van after him.

“You okay?”

The man must have heard him — unless he was deaf or

had mud in his ears — but he just walked up to the house



53

and right smack into the closed front door. After a minute

or two, the door opened and he disappeared inside.

“Rough day at work, I guess,” said Dana.

“Maybe he’s an alligator wrestler,” suggested Joe.

“Alligators don’t live this far north, stupid,” said Emma.

“But clearly he was coming from someplace muddy.”

“The closest body of water is two point one miles south-

southeast of here,” said Dana, clicking away on a computer

in the back of the minivan. “That roughly lines up with

the direction he was coming from.”

“Step on it, driver!” said Willy.

“Hey, I’m in charge around here,” I said and added, “as

should be obvious to a bunch of people who depend on my

imagination for their very existence.”

“Sorry, your highness,” said Joe, returning the fl urry

of food wrappers, soda cans, and sneakers that had nailed

him earlier.

We’d just turned onto County Road 23 when Emma

suddenly shrieked like a banshee.

A dog had run into the street just feet away from our

car.


54

Chapter 16

I BRAKED SO hard that everybody in the backseats ended

up in the front seats.

“What’s with all the jaywalking delays?” I grumbled. I

had an investigation to conduct here.

“Aw,” said Emma, sitting up and looking at the poor

animal shivering in the van’s headlights.

“Somebody tried to burn him,” she exclaimed as we got

out of the van. She gathered the medium- sized brown dog

in her arms.

“Are you sure you want to pick him up like that?” asked

Joe. “He’s, like, really muddy.”

Emma shot him a reproachful glance.

“Judging from the shape of the burn marks,” said Willy,

petting the dog’s head, “I’d say an alien fi rearm did this.



55

He’s a lucky pup to have escaped with only some singed

fur.”

“He doesn’t have a collar,” Dana observed.

“Which is just one more reason why we’re taking him

with us,” said Emma. “We’ll check with the animal shelter

to see if anybody’s missing a dog, and, if not, we’ll adopt

him. And, for now, his name will be Lucky, just like Willy

said.”

I thought about this for a moment. Unlike the rest of

them, Lucky wouldn’t just disappear when I needed to be

alone. So if Emma adopted him and then Emma wasn’t

around for a bit, the dog would be my responsibility. I felt

like a parent having an awkward moment at PetSmart.

“Um, I think we better leave him here. I mean, he was

probably going someplace —” I broke off. Emma looked

like she was deciding exactly how to conduct my public

execution.

“Right,” I said. “Bring him into the van already.” I’d fi g-

ure this out later. He was a pretty sweet- looking dog, at

least under the burned fur and inch- thick mud.

Hey, I may be an alien, but I still have a heart.


56

Chapter 17

WE TRAVELED ABOUT a quarter mile down an un-

painted, heavily potholed strip of asphalt that saw more

traffi c from combines and livestock trailers than passen-

ger vehicles. I knew we’d hit the boondocks when we saw

something far stranger than a farm animal emerge about

twenty feet in front of the van.

It was an alien picnic. Right there in the middle of the

road was a cluster of Number 5’s henchbeasts.

“Um . . .” wondered Joe. “Why aren’t they attacking us?”

“It worked!” said Dana. “See, I put us in stealth mode.

We can see them, but they can’t see us. Or hear us, for that

matter. A mile or so back I turned on a cloaking device

that renders the van invisible.

“Go ahead,” she continued, “test it out. Drive up

closer.”



57

As we slowly approached, we could see some of them

were munching on chicken wings. Not buffalo- or BBQ-

style, though . . . they were the kind with feathers still on

them and blood still in them. They guzzled cans of motor

oil to wash them down and tossed the empties to the

ground and stomped on them like they were at a fraternity

party.

And then we noticed one henchbeast had something

that looked suspiciously like a cat’s tail hanging out of its

mouth.

“That’s so disgusting,” said Joe. “I mean people say they

could eat a horse when they’re hungry, but that’s just an

expression. What kind of monster would actually eat a

poor little kitty?”

“Stay here, Lucky,” said Emma, and before the rest of

us could stop her, she’d jumped out of the van and was

sprinting toward the aliens.


58

Chapter 18

I’VE GOT TO hand it to Emma — for a peacenik, she really

knows how to lay down some hurt. That fi rst alien she

decked must have thought it had been teleported back up into

space for all the stars and blackness it was suddenly seeing.

Still, this was a case of seven versus one, and, though

she managed to knock down a henchbeast and had deliv-

ered some serious facial rearrangement to another, she was

soon at the uncomfortable center of an alien pileup.

Willy was the fi rst to reach her side. He grabbed the

nearest henchbeast and threw him a dozen yards straight

into a tree. The young maple shook and dropped a lot of

sticks and leaves but fared better than the alien — which

shook and dropped most of its legs.

Joe, Emma, and I managed to take out another two, but

the other aliens had remembered their guns by this point



59

and were laying down some heavy fi re that kept us playing

far more defense than offense.

That is, until it occurred to me that I could turn their

high- powered plasma guns into Super Soakers.

Willy was quick to notice the change, and he jumped

forward, taking a shot right in the chest.

“Oh no!” he screamed, “I’m me- eh- eh- elting!!!” And

then he collapsed to the ground.

“Or . . . not!” he said, leaping back up and adopting an

intimidating martial arts stance.

Alien henchbeasts tend not to be as deep or as sensitive

as human beings, but they do have faces, so it’s pretty easy

to tell what emotions they’re feeling. In this case, the look

on their ugly mugs is what you could safely call terror.

For a few seconds, they continued to halfheartedly squirt

lame streams of water at Willy and my friends . . . and then

dropped their plastic toys and scattered into the woods.

“You okay, Emma?” asked Dana, as our friend got back

to her feet.

“It was a cat,” she said, pointing to a pile of torn fl ea

collars on the pavement.

We nodded sympathetically. I spotted a satchel one of the

aliens had been carrying and began to rummage through it.

“Promise me, Daniel,” said Emma. “We’re going to get

every last one of these monsters.”

“That’s job one,” I reassured her. But I was preoccupied

with something I’d found in the satchel. Something very

strange, and distressing.


60

Chapter 19

IT WAS A small piece of jewelry from my home planet.

My people are incredible and distinctive craftsmen,

and I instantly identifi ed the small silver pendant of an

elephant as genuine Alparian handiwork, not some dime-

store knockoff.

In fact, elephant pendants like this were commonly

worn by adults who leave the planet, emblems of home-

world solidarity. My mother and father had both received

them when they had graduated from the Academy and

accepted jobs in the Protectorship. As far as I knew, they’d

never taken them off.

So what on earth — or any other planet, for that

matter — were a bunch of Number 5’s henchbeasts doing

walking around with an Alpar Nokian elephant necklace?

It had to be one of my fi rst memories, that little silver



61

elephant hanging from my mother’s neck. I’d play with it

endlessly, watching it twirl and catch the light whenever

she held me in her arms . . . though I hadn’t thought about

it in years.

I wiped away some moisture from my eye before it

technically became a tear. One more mystery for me to solve,

I thought with a sigh, putting the pendant in my pocket.

Just then I had this really weird sensation that I

was being watched, and I spun around. But there was

nothing — just cricket- infested woods.

“Joe,” I yelled into the van, “are you picking up any

alien life- forms on the scanners?”

“Nothing but regular wildlife. Those cat eaters we

scared off are miles away by now.”

Great, I thought. Now Number 5’s made me paranoid, on

top of everything else.


62

Chapter 20

AFTER A MILE or so, the county road crossed over the

freeway, and we pulled into a small Exxon minimart at

the end of the off- ramp to regroup about where the night’s

mission was headed. We got some waters and sodas, and

Joe bought a couple dozen bags of chips, a fi stful of jerky

sticks, and at least a dozen Hostess bakery products.

That was normal, but here’s the weird part: Joe actu-

ally stopped eating in the back of the van before he’d fi n-

ished inhaling his third bag of nacho cheese chips. Even

weirder, he paused to place a crumb inside what looked

like a miniature microwave oven.

“ Fifty- three percent Benton, Iowa; thirty- two percent

Edison, New Jersey; eleven percent Las Piedras, Mexico;

three percent Ankang, China. And trace quantities from,



63

oh, a planet that’s about twenty- fi ve thousand light years

away from Earth.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Dana.

“That corn chip. This machine can pinpoint the origins

of any sample you put inside it. In this case, a corn chip.”

“Your corn chip has extraterrestrial ingredients?” asked

Dana, wrinkling her nose.

“Well, it’s mostly from Iowa — probably the corn part,”

said Joe.

“It’s no surprise, really,” I said. “The List tells us there

are how many thousand aliens living here on Earth?”

“Probably one of them works at the snack factory and

sneezed on the production line,” said Dana.

“Yeah,” said Emma, “or they’re trying to poison the

population or something.”

“It’s possible,” said Joe, sticking another handful of

chips in his mouth. “Aw I cun . . . sayfersher is . . . day . . .

tayse . . . perrygood.”

“Think you can fi t some caviar in there?” I asked, hand-

ing Joe a can from my backpack. It was the tin that mom

had found in the mailbox.

He put the whole can inside and slammed the door

shut. The machine hummed while Joe swallowed the last

of the chips.

“Yeah, this one’s not going to earn ‘organic’ certifi ca-

tion, either. The paper looks like it might have come from

Oregon trees, but the metal and stuff inside is defi nitely

from a galaxy far, far away.”


James Patterson

64

“Let me guess,” I said, “Number 5’s home planet.”

“On the button,” said Joe.

“Guys,” said Dana, hunkering over her console. “I’m

seeing signs of alien activity a few hundred yards from

here. And there’s some sort of freaky transmission coming

from a TV relay station just up that hill over there.”

Against the starry sky, we could see a sinister red light

blinking atop a steel- framed communications tower.

“Listen to this.”

The minivan’s speaker system began to play a decidedly

unearthly series of clicks, moans, and static.

Lucky bared his teeth and made a low growl.

“Atta boy,” said Emma, stroking his neck reassuringly.

“Let’s go rid Earth of some aliens.”


65

Chapter 21

THE RELAY STATION’S access road was barricaded by a

chain- link gate.

“Want me to make it go away?” asked Willy, already

aiming his plasma cannon at it.

“It’s easier to spy on aliens when they don’t hear you

coming,” I said.

So we left Lucky to guard the van, and, as stealthily as

an Alien Hunter and his four imagined friends can man-

age, we jumped the fence. It was fi fteen feet high, but we

can do tall buildings in a single bound, so it really wasn’t

an issue.

We snuck up the hardscrabble road on foot. At the top

of the hill and inside another fence — this one topped with

concertina wire — we found a pretty typical broadcast sub-

station: a small forest of towers, satellite dishes, antennas,


James Patterson

66

and transformers. The small control shack also looked to

have been built by human hands.

Everything, in fact, seemed pretty normal — except

that the door to the shack had been blown off its hinges,

and there was an eerie blue glow emanating from with-

in . . . and, of course, the air was fi lled with the disgusting

stink of aliens.

We broke out some night- vision binoculars and long-

range microphones and crept closer. There were a half

dozen henchbeasts inside the shack, guzzling motor oil

and laughing their ugly butts off as one of them edited

video footage.

The transmissions were surreal scenes of townspeople

doing dances, singing a capella, and, always at the end,

getting vaporized. That especially sent the aliens into

hysterics.

Just then the picture on the monitors changed to the

glowering image of their boss, and they quickly stood at

nervous attention.

“Are you no- talent alien clowns having a good time?”

asked Number 5.

“Yes, sir! — I mean no, sir! — We mean —”

“Spare me the stupidity,” said Number 5. “And see if

you can’t spare yourselves and me yet another production

delay. Our friend the Alien Hunter is forty- fi ve meters

away.”

“Well, so much for the element of surprise,” said Joe.

Willy cracked his knuckles and then, in his best Bruce

Willis impersonation, said, “Lock and load.”


67

Chapter 22

NOTE TO SELF: when fi ghting hand- to-hand with

rubber- skeletoned aliens — which some of these evidently

were — remember that thing Sir Isaac Newton said about

every action being met with an equal and opposite reaction.

Because no sooner had I landed a devastating round-

house kick to the head of one of the henchbeasts than I

was sailing through the night like I’d just jumped off a ten-

story building onto a trampoline.

I somehow managed to land on my feet on the far side

of the control shack and was ready to spring back into

action, but my friends had already fi gured out how to deal

with these overly fl exible aliens. You simply tie one of

their limbs to a fi xed object, such as the steel girders of the

broadcast tower, and then you run with their bodies in the

opposite direction.


James Patterson

68

Then, when you can’t run any farther, you let go

and — bang! — the creatures snap back into themselves

with such force that they explode like dropped water bal-

loons. Only they’re fi lled with some sort of sticky greenish

syrup rather than water.

Gross but effective.

The other type of henchbeast we encountered wasn’t

quite so stretchy but had its own surprise — some sort of

gland on the abdomen that could spray a jet of foul black

acid more than thirty feet.

We found they weren’t very good at aiming up, how-

ever. The secret was to jump into the air and then crush

them from above — splat! — just like a foot squashing a

bug.

But since they each weighed about a hundred fi fty

pounds, they left your sneakers a whole lot messier.


69

Chapter 23

ONCE WE’D SAFELY dispatched the last of them, we

ducked into the control shack, hoping to fi nd some clues.

It was worrisome that Number 5 often seemed to know my

whereabouts.

There was no sign of him, however.

“So what were they up to in here?” asked Joe.

“I think Number 5’s getting ready for a new show,” I

said. “Our friends were probably uploading the footage to

an extraterrestrial receiver for postproduction. Joe, can

you fi gure out anything useful about this setup?”

He was already poring over the equipment, following

wires and examining switches and displays.

“Yeah, it looks like most of the data is getting broadcast

straight up into space. There’s a small signal coming back,


James Patterson

70

though. Probably a guidance beacon, but it might be some-

thing else. Here, let me see if I can get it on this set here.”

He moved some wires to different jacks and threw a

couple of switches. And then we saw what might have

been the most sickening thing I’d ever seen.

And, yes, I’ve been on the Internet before.


dan x wts excerpt

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